The Unusual Life Of Tristan Smith Part 36

In Voorstand she was, among other things, a facilitator. This was not a job she would ever have imagined taking, but it would have to do until she found a position as a Verteller in the Sirkus.*

A few facilitators liked to frighten the meat. Others were the soothing ones, talking in big deep voices and just being calm in the middle of all that confusion. Some achieved good results just by being good-looking Kreigtown Jimmy, Marvin Tromp, little Oloff all these guys had to do was stand there being gorgeous and work would come to them. Others, like those Vargas girls, focused on price, cutting their margins to the bone, trying to get the signature on that little bit of paper.

Once you had it signed, that meant you could relax: the meat was yours. Next: you got them into Saarlim, got them registered as pre-dated POWs with whoever was your contact in the military. You got their little pink and blue registration card. You shook their hand. You maybe introduced them to some housing, got yourself a little extra folding for the trouble. Some facilitators, allegedly allegedly, got a percentage of the rent money for the first year, but facilitators were such bullschtool. They would say anything.

There was a gate at the tunnel entrance. It must have worked, some long time ago, but it sure as h.e.l.l did not work any more. It lay on the ground, rusting into the red dust. This was the gate that my wheelchair bounced across on the night I arrived in Voorstand.

No messenger arrived before me.

When the first set of spotlights illuminated the tunnel entrance, my reception committee readied itself car doors opened, radios were turned off. Then, no one moved.

There was only Leona she alone spotlit like an actor on a stage, walking towards me, holding a clipboard. She ambled towards the runnel entrance where the earth was ground so fine and dry, like the earth in a cattle kraal. She was short, broad, rough-looking, in a battered brown leather jacket and baggy combat trousers with neck-ties knotted round the ankles to keep out the night chill.

I had just been robbed. My frippes were split. I saw her full lips, her sleepy eyes, her round coffee-coloured face, her orange-blonde hair cut close, in a fringe; I could not tell if it meant harm or safety for me.

She looked at me.

I saw her s.h.i.+ver. It ran in a ripple from her face down to her knees. 'I's OK, hunning,' she said. 'You're not the only one is frighted.'

I thought she meant that she was feared of me, but she was referring to the other facilitators who, now they had seen me clearly, were placing their clipboards back on the dash and slamming their truck doors closed. These facilitators did not want to touch anything sick. Anything just the tiniest bit viral, they would not touch it. They stayed with their windows shut, the air-kool on, their hunters' halogens s.h.i.+ning on us.

Leona, for reasons I will tell you later, had to take this job. Even when she saw our remaining 39 Guilders, she had no choice. She pushed the crumpled notes quickly down into her pockets and signed us up, all three of us.

'My name is Leona,' the facilitator said to Jacques and Wally.

I signed my big and fancy signature Tristan Smith Tristan Smith with special loops like on a bank note. When she saw my name she smiled. with special loops like on a bank note. When she saw my name she smiled.

'Welcome,' she said to me. 'My name is Leona.'

And there and then, in the middle of the desert, in a sea of white light, she began what seemed to me, with my history, like an audition piece. She declaimed to us, in a rich round voice. She had no rhyti or bhalam to accompany her. She did not sing as she might have as a Verteiler, but she chanted thus: 'What you are looking at here is a Pow-pow.

Lots of people don't like that term.

They tell you, it demeaning.

They tell you, don't insult me.

I tell you, Be pleased.

I am going to make you a Pow pow, I going to get you that little medal, the one with the pink and blue writing on it, the one with POW in big grey letters right across your face.

I tell you be happy. I am a Pow-pow.

It is the Pow-pows make this country great.

Not the Dutchies, they're history.

Not the Anglos they lost the war.

It is the Pow-wows who dance on the high wire with Bruder Skat.

Be pleased.

It is us Pow-pows who tell the story for Oncle Dog, who dive through the air with Meneer Mouse.

We are the ones who keep the Hairy Man laughing.

Not the Dutchies they're too fat.

Not the Anglos they lost the war.

Alice de Stihl, Boddy Gross-Silva, James Featherfleur.

Laser-Art, Spray-effect, Symphonic Clowns.

Pow-pow Music, Tap, Joy-dancing, Sirkus Stomp.

Pow! Pow!'

We stood in the glare of the spotlights, like cambruces, hayseeds called up into the centre ring. Leona blew the smoke off the end of the barrel of her imaginary guns, twirled them, slipped them in her holster.

'Welcome to Voorstand,' she said. 'Arts and Leisure capital of the world.'

I pulled my big white canvas hat down over my eyes and crossed my arms over my chest, but my trousers were slit and my bone-thin legs were naked to the light.

Jacques put his shoulders back, and poked his sunburnt nose at the heat as if he did not give a d.a.m.n who looked at him or what they did to him.

As for Wally, I do not exaggerate when I say that the dear old turtle transformed himself. He uncurled like a paper flower in water. He lifted his face towards the light. He raised his freckled liver-spotted arm and waved waved at the unseen Voorstanders. He turned his ruined face towards me, his thirst-white mouth loose, but smiling. at the unseen Voorstanders. He turned his ruined face towards me, his thirst-white mouth loose, but smiling.

'How about us!' he said, so pleased that he made me laugh. We were broke, penniless, without a cash parole. 'Hey,' my dab said, blood running down his forehead, 'how about us!'

*The Voorstand reader will be aware of how unlikely this was, for although all Sirkuses originally had a Verteiler whose epic songs formed the narrative backbone of the Sirkus at the time Tristan Smith arrived in Saarlim only three Sirkuses still used Verteilers.

15.

This was my maman's country. This was her land, and in that sense it was my land too. It was most unfortunate that I should be forced to stand here as a pauper and an alien.

It was four a.m., but the clay-pan at the tunnel mouth was like a fairground all the facilitators' cars and trucks with their different lights: headlights, quartz halogens, fairy lights flas.h.i.+ng around their contours, the air smelling of diesel fuel, woodsmoke, ketchup, fatty food, sugar burning in the night.

The Big Dipper, my maman's stars, was overhead. There was liquor in the air, ganja stick. Life crackled around me like small-arms fire. We followed Leona as she hustled across the bare earth towards the headlights.

As we went, the facilitators called to her, 'Wear your mask, Leona.' 'Wear your mask, Leona.' They made voices of disgust. Baark. Baarf. Urrrrk. That is how you greeted me, Madam, Meneer. They made voices of disgust. Baark. Baarf. Urrrrk. That is how you greeted me, Madam, Meneer. 'Hold your breath, Leona-honey.' 'Hold your breath, Leona-honey.'

'Don't mind them,' Leona said. 'They just ignorant. Here my Blikk.'

Blikk it is your word, as familiar to you as your toothbrush. To me, it was a jewel from the crown of your songs and stories alien, mysterious, far more than what we mean when we say 'car'. Leona's Blikk, although not new, was gleaming, studded with small flas.h.i.+ng pinp.r.i.c.k lights, not just on the bulbous fenders, or on the side doors, but right across its wide curving roof.

Wally turned and looked at me, his face cracked open in a grin. This response, of course, was exactly what I wanted when I imagined the trip. It was imagining this that helped me overcome my phobia the thought that my will could make him carefree, happy, not weighed down by history or loneliness.

But when I had imagined this I had not expected to arrive a pauper in the desert, and now that was my lot, my breathing was shallow in my chest, and I felt light, faint. I could not be the joyous man I had expected.

'Come on,' he said. 'Who else do you know who has ever come to Voorstand through a tunnel.' tunnel.'

'We ... lost ... our ... money.' money.'

For answer he gave me a very distinctive, mischievous grin.

'NO ... don't ... even ... think ... of ... it.'

'Don't what?'

'I ... know ... that ... grin.'

It was the same grin he wore when he arrived home with stolen watches and unnecessary toaster ovens.

'This ... is ... not ... Chemin ... Rouge.'

I hated him to steal. Twice he had been detained overnight in jail. As a result I feared the police, the courts, all those in uniform.

'Don't ... even ... think ... of ... it.'

'Don't think of what?' he insisted, but then Leona interrupted.

'You ever see Gyro's Sirkus?' she asked us.

'Read about it,' Wally said. Now all his attention was focused on Leona. He thrust his hands into his pockets and pushed his eyebrows forward.

'Gyro's Sirkus,' Jacques said. 'I know what you're going to say.'

'What am I going to say, handsome?'

'We don't get the big Sirkuses in Efica,' Jacques said. 'But we get the Simulation Domes. I saw the Simulation. Three hundred and sixty degrees. Three-D. This is the car right?'

'This here Blikk,' Leona said. 'This the exact same one they drove across the high wire in Gyro's Sirkus.'

We had exactly three Guilders left between us, and my companions were staring at the Blikk, smiling, the pair of them rubbing their faces with their hands.

'You want to take a photo,' Leona said, 'it's OK.'

Jacques had no camera, but Wally gleefully followed the facilitator's suggestion. His flash flashed. The car blinked its lights back at him, like a giant dung beetle talking to its servant.

Leona looked at me and winked. I tried to wink back, but all I was thinking about was how we were to get money.

'You can't wink,' she said. She blew gum from between her teeth and popped it. 'You done all tried,' she said, 'but you can't do it. I seed you tried tried to do it. I know you, I knowed your type. ' to do it. I know you, I knowed your type. '

I could not even think about her. But for Wally, of course, she was a woman and she was talking to me, and I might misunderstand her and fall in love.

Suddenly he had no interest in photography. 'OK,' he said to me. He picked me up my trousers were slit like rags, my legs were there for anyone to see. 'Time to go,' he said to Jacques and Leona as he struggled with me to the open seat of the Blikk.

'What's ... your ... problem?' I asked him. 'For ... G.o.d's ... sake.'

He said something to me, but it was drowned by the extraordinary roar of the Blikk's V12 engine. Leona was ready. She slammed her door and fiddled with the choke. Jacques tumbled in beside me.

'Bout dawn,' Leona called, 'you're going to see some stuff.'

Then, without warning, she drove, fast, b.u.mpy, full gas.

16.

Leona had smooth tan leather gloves. She loved to let that wheel spin through her broad little hands. 'Wink, he ain't pleased,' she called. She slid the Blikk on sandy corners and bucked it high on rocky pa.s.sages.

'Look at him. He p.i.s.sed as h.e.l.l.'

Why would I not be? I had ripped trousers, mutant legs. I was three foot six, powerless beneath the big empty sky of Voorstand.

'I see him coming out the tunnel, ducking and diving, didn't want to give a penny to no one.'

She looked at me. Every time I looked up those eyes were on me in that wide rear-vision mirror.

'Didn't want to give no Guilder to me. So d.a.m.ned mad couldn't even wink at me, ain't that right, honey? You was mad as two fleas,' she said.

'Still ... am,' I said. I looked right back at her. I could see her in the wide-screen mirror: broad nose, handsome face, yellow desert eyes.

'What's he say?'

'He still is,' said Wally. 'Not with you, with me.'

'When he signed the A22 form, you should have seed the loop-deloop. Don't f.u.c.k With Me. That was what he wrote. Straight on the page.'

'It's me he's loup with,' Wally said.

'Loop with?'

'Loup mad, angry.'

'Oncle, I love the way you talk,' she said. She left me then. She began to chew his his bone. Soon she had Wally blus.h.i.+ng about his accent. She made him happy, glowing. When she switched to Jacques, I saw it was her talent, her thing. She was facilitating our entry into Voorstand, calming us, flattering us. And, indeed, when our moods improved, she lapsed into silence. We travelled with our fairy lights still winking from our metal skin. bone. Soon she had Wally blus.h.i.+ng about his accent. She made him happy, glowing. When she switched to Jacques, I saw it was her talent, her thing. She was facilitating our entry into Voorstand, calming us, flattering us. And, indeed, when our moods improved, she lapsed into silence. We travelled with our fairy lights still winking from our metal skin.